Ore-gone for the weekend
Uh, so I went to Portland this weekend. In short, we drove to Portland, met up with Alex, visited Josh and Brooke, then had sushi, then saw X-2, then slept, then went to brunch with people, then Powell's, then I went to Avalon for DDR with Pete, then we got kaiten sushi, then we went to see Darren and Meghan's new apartment, then we drove home.
Got up, got on the road around... 2pm? Well, we left around 2pm but needed to hit an ATM and a gas station and stuff first. I think we got on I-5 closer to 3pm, and we ended up in Portland at 5:30pm or so. I drove the whole way and did pretty well, only once or twice did I feel like I was zoning out. I forget where we went first - I think we may have gone and picked up Alex (Groce - he was in Portland for some conferences) first, yeah - then we went to Josh and Brooke (Eli's brother and sister-in-law)'s place... and drove to Sinju for sushi. It was pretty good, but Brooke had to leave halfway through dinner. So we were like "Ok Josh, what do we do for fun on a Saturday night in Portland?" And he was like "Uhh... go to a bar?"
I suggested we go see a movie, specifically X-2 because I figure I'll never get around to it in Seattle. We walked a couple blocks and got on the MAX (Portland's light rail, which actually seems pretty effective) and went to Lloyd Center to the huge movie theater there, and we saw the movie. It was a decent movie, I enjoyed it, the little jokes were cute, the effects and action were all good. I'm not going to rave about it because I seriously just kinda feel like "whee, comic book movie". I shoulda read more X-men comic books first. Anyway. We took the MAX back and went up and crashed (despite Putty the cat's best attempts to prevent us from doing so).
Sunday we woke up in the late morning, called Alex, called Pete, called Eli's mom to say happy mother's day (I am bad, because I didn't call MY mom, now that I think about it), went to brunch at a place called Sammy's, with Alex and Josh and Eli. Despite it being Mother's Day we got a table fairly quickly and the food was very tasty. Then Alex and Eli and I went to Powell's book store. I spent like an hour there looking through D&D books and movie/music books and Japanese books... and in the meantime Pete (![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
diskozombie) showed up and hung out with me there.
Around 3pm Pete and I went to Avalon, which is a nickel arcade on the other side of the river in Portland. It has a DDR Extreme machine for 25 cents, a Dance Maniax 2nd Append J-Paradise for 15 cents, a Techno Motion for 20 cents, and other stuff. The EX machine, sadly, has been moved from where it was as a MAX2, so it's on a slant and the pads suck and it's really dark. I was having a godawful time playing on it. Pete was going great, SDGing all this random stuff - but he was like "You aren't used to the machine - I know how to hit the arrows to actually register properly". Shrug. But I mean, I got 44 greats on Keep On Movin', and I mean... I got half as many on STEALTH STEPCHART. So I didn't take any of my scores seriously, and if anything, just goofed off a lot. I FC'ed some 4-foot light song on Reverse Boost 1.5 Dark Shuffle. Dance Maniax was okay. I played a few games of Techno Motion. It has 9 arrows on both sides, and modes for 4 arrows (DDR style), 5 arrows (PIU style), and 8 arrows (everything but the center). The fun part is that you can press the buttons to change between the number of arrows IN THE MIDDLE OF PLAYING A SONG. This really fucked with my head, but I enjoyed it a lot. I played a lot of fun korean pop songs (it had 가카이 and Starian and all!!) and kept switching the number of arrows. And spinning around, that was FUN, I always feel like such a goofball trying to do crap like that. Anyway, I bet Techno Motion would be SO funny at IZ or wherever. People would be playing random songs on 4 arrows or whatnot and someone would run up and change it to 8 arrows or something :) It would be so silly. Hm. And I got a beanie baby out of a crane machine! On my first try! for 20 cents! Wowie!
6pm or so we left Avalon and went back to Powell's. We found Alex and Eli pretty easily, and decided to get sushi for dinner. Pete directed us to a kaiten sushi place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (For those that don't know me, kaiten sushi was like one of my FAVORITE THINGS IN JAPAN, SECOND ONLY TO BOOK-OFF.) So, this place was called Sushi Takahashi, it's in Portland on Broadway street I think, and their method was not boats or conveyor belts, but rather, a model train set :) The tracks go around the sushi chef area and they put plates of sushi on the train, and it goes by and you take plates off, and you can also fill out a paper saying which things you want. It was so cool. I ate like... 10 plates of sushi or something :) Just like back in Kanazawa... it was so yummy! And so neat!
So while eating sushi, I got a call on my cellphone frommoviechick and sleeplessone who were like "HEY! COME SEE OUR NEW PLACE!" So after dinner I said goodbye to Pete, and dropped off Alex, and Eli and I hit the road. We stopped off in Vancouver. We got to see Darren and Meghan and Joelle and Jedi and Jeff's new apartment (as in they moved in yesterday). It's HUGE! It's like two stories high and has tons of big closets and bathrooms and stuff. Only Darren and Meghan and Joelle (and Joelle's friends?) were there at the time, so Eli and I hung out talking to Darren and Meghan for a lot longer than we intended, and then we had to hit the road again. I drove the whole way back, too. I drove like almost 400 miles this weekend. Whee!
So yeah. I had a good weekend. Now I have to go back to reality again :( This week I will probly dedicate to playing DDR a lot, and maybe I'll see the Matrix if anyone wants to invite me along to an outing, and then on Friday I go to California for the Bemani By the Bay tournament. Cali friends - I don't know how much time I'll have to hang out, but I'm hoping to go to SVGL on that Saturday night, and if anyone wants to come see a DDR tournament and hang out for a bit, we'll be at the Riptide Arcade on Pier 39. And I'll have my cell with me of course.
Got up, got on the road around... 2pm? Well, we left around 2pm but needed to hit an ATM and a gas station and stuff first. I think we got on I-5 closer to 3pm, and we ended up in Portland at 5:30pm or so. I drove the whole way and did pretty well, only once or twice did I feel like I was zoning out. I forget where we went first - I think we may have gone and picked up Alex (Groce - he was in Portland for some conferences) first, yeah - then we went to Josh and Brooke (Eli's brother and sister-in-law)'s place... and drove to Sinju for sushi. It was pretty good, but Brooke had to leave halfway through dinner. So we were like "Ok Josh, what do we do for fun on a Saturday night in Portland?" And he was like "Uhh... go to a bar?"
I suggested we go see a movie, specifically X-2 because I figure I'll never get around to it in Seattle. We walked a couple blocks and got on the MAX (Portland's light rail, which actually seems pretty effective) and went to Lloyd Center to the huge movie theater there, and we saw the movie. It was a decent movie, I enjoyed it, the little jokes were cute, the effects and action were all good. I'm not going to rave about it because I seriously just kinda feel like "whee, comic book movie". I shoulda read more X-men comic books first. Anyway. We took the MAX back and went up and crashed (despite Putty the cat's best attempts to prevent us from doing so).
Sunday we woke up in the late morning, called Alex, called Pete, called Eli's mom to say happy mother's day (I am bad, because I didn't call MY mom, now that I think about it), went to brunch at a place called Sammy's, with Alex and Josh and Eli. Despite it being Mother's Day we got a table fairly quickly and the food was very tasty. Then Alex and Eli and I went to Powell's book store. I spent like an hour there looking through D&D books and movie/music books and Japanese books... and in the meantime Pete (
diskozombie) showed up and hung out with me there. Around 3pm Pete and I went to Avalon, which is a nickel arcade on the other side of the river in Portland. It has a DDR Extreme machine for 25 cents, a Dance Maniax 2nd Append J-Paradise for 15 cents, a Techno Motion for 20 cents, and other stuff. The EX machine, sadly, has been moved from where it was as a MAX2, so it's on a slant and the pads suck and it's really dark. I was having a godawful time playing on it. Pete was going great, SDGing all this random stuff - but he was like "You aren't used to the machine - I know how to hit the arrows to actually register properly". Shrug. But I mean, I got 44 greats on Keep On Movin', and I mean... I got half as many on STEALTH STEPCHART. So I didn't take any of my scores seriously, and if anything, just goofed off a lot. I FC'ed some 4-foot light song on Reverse Boost 1.5 Dark Shuffle. Dance Maniax was okay. I played a few games of Techno Motion. It has 9 arrows on both sides, and modes for 4 arrows (DDR style), 5 arrows (PIU style), and 8 arrows (everything but the center). The fun part is that you can press the buttons to change between the number of arrows IN THE MIDDLE OF PLAYING A SONG. This really fucked with my head, but I enjoyed it a lot. I played a lot of fun korean pop songs (it had 가카이 and Starian and all!!) and kept switching the number of arrows. And spinning around, that was FUN, I always feel like such a goofball trying to do crap like that. Anyway, I bet Techno Motion would be SO funny at IZ or wherever. People would be playing random songs on 4 arrows or whatnot and someone would run up and change it to 8 arrows or something :) It would be so silly. Hm. And I got a beanie baby out of a crane machine! On my first try! for 20 cents! Wowie!
6pm or so we left Avalon and went back to Powell's. We found Alex and Eli pretty easily, and decided to get sushi for dinner. Pete directed us to a kaiten sushi place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (For those that don't know me, kaiten sushi was like one of my FAVORITE THINGS IN JAPAN, SECOND ONLY TO BOOK-OFF.) So, this place was called Sushi Takahashi, it's in Portland on Broadway street I think, and their method was not boats or conveyor belts, but rather, a model train set :) The tracks go around the sushi chef area and they put plates of sushi on the train, and it goes by and you take plates off, and you can also fill out a paper saying which things you want. It was so cool. I ate like... 10 plates of sushi or something :) Just like back in Kanazawa... it was so yummy! And so neat!
So while eating sushi, I got a call on my cellphone from
moviechick and sleeplessone who were like "HEY! COME SEE OUR NEW PLACE!" So after dinner I said goodbye to Pete, and dropped off Alex, and Eli and I hit the road. We stopped off in Vancouver. We got to see Darren and Meghan and Joelle and Jedi and Jeff's new apartment (as in they moved in yesterday). It's HUGE! It's like two stories high and has tons of big closets and bathrooms and stuff. Only Darren and Meghan and Joelle (and Joelle's friends?) were there at the time, so Eli and I hung out talking to Darren and Meghan for a lot longer than we intended, and then we had to hit the road again. I drove the whole way back, too. I drove like almost 400 miles this weekend. Whee!So yeah. I had a good weekend. Now I have to go back to reality again :( This week I will probly dedicate to playing DDR a lot, and maybe I'll see the Matrix if anyone wants to invite me along to an outing, and then on Friday I go to California for the Bemani By the Bay tournament. Cali friends - I don't know how much time I'll have to hang out, but I'm hoping to go to SVGL on that Saturday night, and if anyone wants to come see a DDR tournament and hang out for a bit, we'll be at the Riptide Arcade on Pier 39. And I'll have my cell with me of course.
pier 39
also i will probably be at SVGL Saturday night, so hopefully i'll see you there. Good luck in the competition!
no subject
I hope to get to SVGL on saturday night.
andrew
passed a cata yesterday!